Contact

• Mail: textpresso@gmail.com
• X (formerly Twitter): @kotoriko
• Blog: cocolog-nifty.hatenablog.com
• Note: note.com/yamasitataihei

Books

2020

• The Method of Simple Living: Meiji Japan Had the Best, Stress-Free Way to Live (Kan'i Seikatsu no Hōhō), Asahi Shimbun Publications on Amazon

2019

• A Book That Takes Some 200,000 Characters to Introduce the Magnificent World of Novels That Existed in Meiji Japan, in Which a Rough-and-Tumble Student and an African Man Beat the Hero of "The Dancing Girl" to a Pulp (Maihime no Shujinkō o Bankara to Afurikajin ga Bokoboko ni Suru Saikō no Shōsetsu no Sekai ga Meiji ni Sonzai Shita node Nijūmanji Kurai Kakete Shōkai Suru Hon), Kashiwashobo on Amazon 9th place, Kinokuniya Humanities Award 2020 shortlisted, 73rd Mystery Writers of Japan Award, criticism and research division

Serials and contributions

Serial

• 2011-2013 "Forgotten Stories: Finding the Kōdan Shorthand Books," in Studio Ghibli's Neppū

Contributions

• 2020/02 Ahead of Our Own Time? The Ultimate Simple Life, Found in Meiji Japan Issatsu no Hon, from the author
• 2019/12 My Three Favourite Chūkō Shinsho: Reading That Widens, Books That Settle You Web Chūkō Shinsho
• 2019/07 The Meiji Insect Collecting That Fell Out of the Record Shinchō, August issue
• 2019/05 Eureka, June issue, special feature: the world of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Seidosha
• 2019/04 "First, Get Rid of Your Purpose" — the Kotoriko way of taking in a great deal of knowledge while living an entertaining life
• 2017/04 Eureka, May issue: "I Have Found It" Seidosha
• 2015/12 The Sanada Clan in Story, Asahi Shimbun Digital part 1 part 2 part 3

Interviews and media

2020

• He "Gave Up" on Life in Primary School: where a man who arrived at the ultimate simple life now stands (07/26)
• If Your Workplace Is Stuffy and Inefficient: three things to stop doing right now (07/19)
• The Freedom a Temp Worker Found in the Pandemic: full-timers "look worn out" (07/12)
• PHP Special, February 2020 issue (06/10)
• Shūkan Asahi, expanded issue of April 10, 2020, "The Person Who Wrote It: Yamashita Taihei" (04/10)

2019

• PRESIDENT: a secondhand-book obsessive falls hard for the deep world of e-books (10/04)
• Yomiuri Shimbun, morning edition — [Passing It On] Cultural property today (4): digitizing materials and putting them online; libraries and research institutions send Japan abroad (08/26)
• PRESIDENT: why sloppy stories about "Meiji scumbags" were turned out by the cartload (08/16)
• "When the Story Stalls, Somebody Gets Punched"? What Mai-Boko, a guide to bizarre Meiji entertainment fiction, is (06/30)
• Magazine Kō: the story of a humanities publisher that tried to sell an unknown newcomer's book in a plain field by giving it an impossibly long title (06/18)
• Yomiuri Shimbun, evening edition: sharing the fun of Meiji stories (06/09)
• After 6 Junction: about forty minutes of radio introducing the magnificent world of novels that existed in Meiji Japan, in which a rough-and-tumble student and an African man beat the hero of "The Dancing Girl" to a pulp (05/21)

Odds and ends, and tools

Digital libraries

• Mai-Boko: a collection of Meiji entertainment fiction
• Digital Humanities Monthly, no. 95: "Reception, Amateurism, Citizen Science"
• Get everything you can out of Japan Search, which searches across the digital archives of museums, libraries, and public archives
• Making Use of the Utilization Schema (PDF)

Talks and events

• 2019/08/23 Mie Literature Study Group: "How to Look Things Up on the Internet" slides (PDF)

Tools

• nhg-minor-mode: a tool to help write Japanese documents
• year-convert: an Emacs package that toggles the year under the cursor between the Western calendar and Japanese era names

National Diet Library Digital Collections: access record

Support what I do

The kind of culture I look into does not attract much money. If you feel like it, support me. There is nothing in it for you. I just keep going, and play.

• Subscribe to my magazine on note.com
• Become a sponsor on GitHub